


On The Dark Side Of The Moon

by RHGroeninga



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassination, Blue Spirit Zuko (Avatar), Crazy Azula (Avatar), Dark Spirit, Firelord Azula (Avatar), Gen, POV Azula (Avatar), Spirits, The Day of Black Sun - Point of Divergence, dream - Freeform, secret crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:47:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23596321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RHGroeninga/pseuds/RHGroeninga
Summary: It was the Avatar's task to assassinate the Fire Lord on the Day of the Black Sun.He failed.(Rated Mature mainly for Azula's demented state of mind (which was technically canon in a Nikelodeon series, I might remind you). And perhaps a bit for Shes, but it's hard to tell which one of these two is most to blame for this macabre dream Azula is having...)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	On The Dark Side Of The Moon

**Azula and Shes**

…

Dim, cavernous halls. Silk curtains moving slowly in a barely noticeable breeze. Rows of red pillars, wide enough for an adult man to hide behind.

Two children playing hide and seek. A girl and a boy.

Sister and brother.

Azula made a whining sound from the back of her throat. “Mother, why are you showing me this? I’ve got better things to do: I’m Fire Lord now.”

The mirage of her mother smiled indulgently. It was how she smiled when Zuko said something especially stupid and even she thought it was better to smile and ignore him than to take him seriously. (She’d never smiled that way to Azula.) (Azula had never said such stupid things.)

“I’m going to father. He has a mission for me. It’s important.” She turned around and stood before the entrance to the war room. Two tall, broad Royal Guards stepped aside and opened the curtain for her. (Their masks were like burnt skulls: two large, black holes where the eyes had molten out.)

Father’s throne room was large. Rows upon rows of red pillars, stopping at a wall of tall, majestic flames. Dancing slowly in a barely noticeable breeze – the breeze of the Fire Lord’s breathing: in, and out, and in, and out.

The princess knelt before her Fire Lord. Between the pillars stood more guards, half-hidden in the shadows, still as statutes – which they might as well be for all she cared, she knew none of the faces behind the helmets and neither did she wish to know. (Behind the mask would be another mask, one born of fear – when the princess looked you in the eyes, it would be the final thing you saw before lightning pierced your heart.)

“I’m here, father.” That was enough. A princess was to show her Lord his due respect, but she was no sniveling servant and would conduct herself with dignity and pride at any time, especially in front of the Fire Lord.

“Azula. By far the most talented of my children. My chosen heir. I demand nothing but perfection from my only daughter, and you’ve always met my expectations.” He sounded displeased. Azula’s stomach sunk into itself, but none of that was visible on her face even as it was still turned to the floor.

“Can you repeat to me, what was the last mission I have given to you?” She did not glance at the rows of guards flanking her. She did not know the faces behind those masks. The throne room was dark and cavernous. She wouldn’t have been able to see the ceiling clearly, had she looked.

No one ever did.

“To protect you, father. To mislead and distract the Avatar until the eclipse is over, to make sure no one would be able to reach you.”

“And did you succeed?”

She swallowed, sure father could read her guilt and fear from behind her mask, even as she was facing her own knees. She always succeeded. This time, again, she’d planned for every outcome, every eventuality, every move and countermove.

She did not know the faces behind those masks. She did not care for the people behind the fear.

Ty Lee had been afraid of her.

Mai had been afraid of her.

Mother had been afraid of her.

Zuko had been afraid of her…

“I am sorry, father. I miscalculated.”

She looked up, without permission of the Fire Lord. She remembered awesome, terrible power raining down on a screaming thirteen year old boy, who’d been nothing but loyal to his Fire Lord, whose only crime had been failing to meet his father’s expectations. But she felt no fear, not the moment she broke protocol, for the fire inside of her was cold, the sun was dark and the eternal wall of flames shielding the Fire Lord from his subjects was down.

“But so did you.”

The Fire Lord’s golden eyes were wide – in shock, in anger or in fear, she was not sure, as a line of bright, beautiful red blossomed from Ozai’s perfect, pearly white neck and rapidly gushed downwards into his equally crimson robes. Azula watched in morbid fascination as the heavy golden crown remained perfectly in place on the Fire Lord’s topknot as his head slowly toppled to the Fire Lord’s left, onto his shoulder, gaining speed as it rolled down the front of his office robes and only halting a meter in front of Azula’s hands, still flat on the ground.

Not a hair on their father’s crowned head was out of place.

…

She had expected she would startle awake. But after a second she still sat there, on her hands and knees, looking at her father’s freshly decapitated skull. The wall of fire was still down, light falling in from the opened shutters, so high in the walls one would need to crank their necks to see them.

Blood was still steadily streaming from her father’s open neck, while it leaked at a much slower rate from the base of his head. The guards still stood between the pillars, not even having twitched at their lords demise – to be frank: to Azula’s amazement.

Behind her father’s still erect body (perfect and unattainable, even in death) stood the Blue Spirit, mask fanged and grinning, eyes as black and bottomless as the empty eye holes of the guard skull helmets, twin swords dripping with their father’s blood.

Azula became irritated. She was supposed to wake up, she remembered clearly now: in the Fire Lord’s apartment, the light of the torches colored a light, disturbed blue, the room empty but for her mother by her bedside as the servants did not dare enter her personal chambers while she was asleep for fear of being mistaken for an assassin. This dream (nightmare) had no business holding her in its grip.

“What do I need to do to return to the real world, mother?” she snapped at the thin air. She could not see her mother, but that did not mean she wasn’t there. She was always there. Ursa lived, after all, in her head.

“Is this a new way of showing your love for me, _mother_?” she sneered angrily, “Showing me Zuko is just as much a monster as I am? Well, you’ve wasted your time, I already figured that out myself. It did surprise me at first, I’ll admit, I truly thought he didn’t have it in him, and I assume it’s safe to believe that so did father.” She glanced back down to dream-Ozai’s head, still staring at her with unseeing eyes. It was somewhat ironic, that Zuko had inherited those exact same bright yellow eyes, while hers resembled more their mother’s darker tint.

Almost as ironic as Zuko finally deciding to step in their father’s footsteps – by committing patricide.

Zuko twitched, and her eyes shot back to his black clad form. It was not that she was afraid of him – she was still the superior sibling after all – but it would do to keep an eye on him, as she could no longer trust that he was too honorable to murder his own family in cold blood.

All her life, Ozai had taught her to rule through fear, for fear was safer than love. But after Zuko had assassinated father on the night of the eclipse and disappeared into the night, she’d realized that she – and her father – had been wrong. Fear did not grant true loyalty, fear was not safe. Fear merely suppressed open opposition, made people demure and bow their heads, made them whisper behind your back and carefully plan your murder when you least expected it. It made the most honorable, loyal sons and brothers stalk the shadows of the palace halls hidden behind theater masks to slaughter their own fathers and sisters during their weakest hour.

That was all fear created: masks. On the servants, on the guards, on the Dai Li, on her two closest allies (friends), on her own brother… They all were afraid, they all wore masks, and she could trust none of them.

Even as she was once a theater player – it was mother who’d inspired the Blue Spirit’s appearance in the first place – mother had never worn a mask. Never for Azula, mother’s fear and disapproval had always been clear on her face. Of her at least, Azula could be sure what she thought.

“ _I love you, Azula.”_ Ignoring the tears that had sprung in her eyes, Azula forced the memory of the hallucination away before it could reappear next to her. Sitting in the fake throne room with the fake guards and the fake corpse of her father and her fake brother with his stupid fake mask, she did not need her fake mother right now.

Z uko merely moved one of his swords to his other hand, using his free hand to pull the mask of his head.  Azula half-expected to see his face as it  had been on the day of the Black Sun, his eyes (so much like father’s) wide and blank as he seemed to be in shock, his breathing too high, his voice weirdly giddy as if he could break out in hysterical laughter or devastat ed weeping at any time but underneath all that a calmness, a coldness that was  simultaneously  the  most terrifying and  the most  recognizable  thing she’d ever seen on  her brother’s face .

I nstead she found just another mask.

“You do realize your mother is just another illusion your sick mind came up with.” Fake-Zuko said with utter nonchalance, not even glancing at the body bleeding dry next to him. The real Zuko had only ever been so casual around her those few days on Ember Island. She did hope though that Zuko appearing wouldn’t become a regular occurrence: in contrast with mother, the real Zuko was still out there, possibly planning to chop her into bits. It wouldn’t do to mistake him for a hallucination when he came.

“And who are you to comment on who’s hallucinatory and who not?” she drawled haughtily. She did not need to remind the hallucination he was not her brother, it obviously was not putting any effort in upholding the act.

The fake-Zuko chuckled, and it sounded weird. Zuko never had chuckled, not even back when mother was still around and he and Azula still played together now and then, even back then he tended to smile or grin silently when he was pleased with something. The past half year the closest to a laugh she’d seen him was the corner of his mouth curling slightly when he and Mai where too deep into each other to realize she was looking. Even his mad giggling as he presented her father’s crown had sounded more natural.

“So you think this is merely a dream, that I am merely a deception of your own making. I’m sorry to disappoint you, child, but even _you_ do not have sufficient imagination to make me up.”

None of her visitors had ever claimed to neither be an illusion nor the person they appeared to be. She narrowed her eyes at the much more grounded version of her brother. There really only was one logical explanation.

“What do you want from me, spirit?”

The fake-Zuko smiled, but it didn’t reach its soulless yellow eyes. “Ah, but you _are_ a clever one. Name’s Shes, if you ever want to exchange spirit-tales with anyone.”

“Unlikely.”

It chuckled again. For some reason, its laugh itched Azula, like ants crawling on her skin.

“What do you think of this realm? I made it all especially for you.”

Was this not actually a dream? It would explain why she had not woken up yet. And she found the notion of this being the spirit’s realm much preferable over this being a new stage in the deterioration of her mind.

“The guards are way to passive. Even if they are in on the assassination attempt, they are still human: they would react on seeing someone being beheaded right in front of their noses. And, to be frank, your Zuko impersonation is abhorrent.”

“Aw, that hurts!” It stepped towards her, its stare suddenly a thousand times more intense. More like Zuko. “Is this better, _sister_?”

That angry growl was scarily accurate. “Barely.”

He stepped closer still, now towering over her. That dark smirk she recognized from their youth, but it looked far more menacing with one eye burned into a permanent glare (and the other looking like father). “Better?” Her mouth was dry as he knelt down next to (fake-)father’s head and picked it up in one hand. The other was still holding the Dual Dao, glistening in the dim light of the unlit throne room, the largest part of its surface still smeared in scarlet.

His eyes moved from his father’s face to hers. They burned with determination, with _desire…_

“You are sick.” The disgust on that face was so familiar it automatically made her smirk in victory.

“ _You_ are not even human.” she purred silkily, before she let her eyes grow cold and her own stare turn back to disdainful. It was a good try, she had to admit, and it was worrying to think Shes might have even fooled her had he not shown his true face moments before, but it could not make her so easily forget that it was a spirit.

“You still have not told me why you have brought me here, and I have better things to do than to chat with spirits all day. I’d appreciate it if you would get to the point.”

“The point.” She was secretly glad it had dropped the act and had transformed back into its more easy-going self again. “The point is that you are at the start of a great spirit journey, and that it’s entirely up to you whether you’ll ever see the palace again!”

It took Azula exactly one second to figure out an appropriate response. “ _What!?_ ”

“You are barely fifteen years old and you inherited a throne, lost all your friends and family, went down the deep end and now you don’t even see a future for yourself. It seems to me it’s the perfect time for a spirit journey.”

“You cannot send me away, I’m the Fire Lord!” she bit out, seething that that measly spirit even _dared_ to suggest it.

“You banished all your staff for fear they might betray you, you surrounded yourself with hot blue fire and locked yourself away so no one may know you are talking to the hallucination of your mother. That’s hardly the start of a long and prosperous rule… And just so you know, you cannot bend in the spirit world.”

Any (non-royal) human being would have writhed away under her glare, but the spirit was not human and therefore immune. Besides, it probably knew she couldn’t really do anything more than glare, she didn’t have her bending and the spirit had two very sharp, very bloody swords, and they both knew how effective those could be against disadvantaged firebenders.

“Don’t worry, you won’t go alone. You see, as you and Zuko are literally the only Fire Nation royalty left alive, it means not only you, but your entire nation is messed up, and as you’re on the brink of winning this war, your madness affects the entire world! There’ll be plenty of people who’ll go on a spirit journey with you, and you won’t recognize most of them, but some of them you definitely will!” It chuckled, and it was appalling. “Now go, my dear, disturbed Fire Lord, and may you find purpose in this new life!”

Azula wanted to yell, she wanted to scream, she wanted to scratch its eyes out with her finger nails as she’d no other weapon at hand, but before she could do any of these things she startled right awake underneath a tall, lonely archway.

From it hung a thin, black curtain. It moved slowly, on an unnoticeable breeze.


End file.
